The 28 Scientists Most Likely to Win the Nobel Prize: Inside the Secret Predictive Formula

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The 28 Scientists Most Likely to Win the Nobel Prize: Inside the Secret Predictive Formula

In early October, the 2013 Nobel Prizes will be announced, spotlighting some of the greatest scientific accomplishments of the last several decades. It’s the Super Bowl, Eurovision, and Election Night of science, all rolled into one, and as with those touchstones of sports, culture, and politics, significant effort has gone into predicting the outcomes.
Perhaps the best annual prognostication comes from Thomson Reuters’ IP & Science division; analysts examine academic paper citations, sprinkle in some intuition based on past awards and subject matter, and generate a list of “Nobel class” researchers.
Since the analysis began, Thomson Reuters has correctly predicted 27 individual awardees, accounting for 15 of the 44 possible prizes in Economics, Physiology or Medicine, Physics, and Chemistry. This is a remarkable number, given the estimated 7 million publishing scientists in the world (according to the OECD). David Pendlebury is the analyst responsible for the special sauce predictive formula. “We look at the scientists who have published one or multiple highly-cited discovery accounts,” he explains, “that have generally been cited thousands of times” by subsequent scientific journal articles. And it’s not necessarily a contemporary reading: the prizes generally recognize work done 20 or 30 years earlier, work that has stood the test of time and proved its worth in the context of larger scientific enterprise.
What follows are Pendlebury’s picks for this year’s – or future years’ – Nobel prizes, your inside track to headlines of coming weeks. “We like to honor highly cited scientists who have made remarkable discoveries. Many of these people of Nobel class will never win, but at least we can shine a spotlight on their achievements.”
Image: The coveted Nobel Prize. (Wikimedia Commons)

Medicine and Physiology: DNA Methylation and Gene Expression
Adrian P. Bird, University of Edinburgh
Howard Cedar, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Aharon Razin, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
All human cells contain the same genetic information, so how do some become lung cells, while others become skin cells? Part of the answer lies in turning certain genes off at just the right time in order to express a certain profile of proteins that will give the cell its ultimate function. DNA methylation – adding a CH3-group to the genetic material – can mark segments of DNA for silencing. When this process goes wrong, unchecked gene expression can lead to cancer or other developmental problems.
Image: An artist’s conception of a DNA molecule, methylated at two cytosine nucleotides. (Wikimedia Commons)

Medicine and Physiology: Autophagy
Daniel J. Klionsky, University of Michigan
Noboru Mizushima, University of Tokyo
Yoshinori Ohsumi, Tokyo Institute of Technology
The process of autophagy – during which cells consume seemingly obsolete bits of cellular machinery – had been known since the 1950s, but when Ohsumi, Mizushima, and Klionsky started to examine the process in the late 1980s, they found that autophagy played a critical role in cell survival and development. Recycling biochemical components proved to be a key adaptation in surviving energetically challenging conditions, and the inability to clear defective organelles seems to be correlated with Parkinson’s disease. More than 30 autophagy-specific genes have been identified, but the details of how targets are selected and broken down remains unclear.
Image: Autophagy in the act of recycling, in a liver cell. (Wikimedia Commons via Chen et al., PLOS ONE, 2013)

Medicine and Physiology: HER-2/NEU Oncogene
Dennis J. Slamon, University of California Los Angeles
In the 1970s, breast cancer patients exhibiting the HER-2 protein were faced with a dismal diagnosis: even with the best possible treatment, recurrence was likely, and the survival rate wasn’t encouraging. But Slamon’s discovery of an antibody that blocks the misdirected protein formed the basis of the drug Herceptin, which has saved countless lives since its approval and widespread adoption. More broadly, the discovery demonstrated that cancer, and breast cancer in particular, is not a single disease with a single cure. Each specific pathology demands a particular targeted response, marking the battle against cancer as a prolonged war that will likely continue far into the future.
Image: A cartoon of a tumor cell overexpressing an aberrant HER-2 protein. (National Cancer Institute, NIH)

Physics: The Brout-Englert-Higgs Boson
Francois Englert, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium and Chapman University
Peter W. Higgs, University of Edinburgh
Where does mass come from? One version of particle physics theory suggests that bosons exhibiting the electroweak interaction should be massless, but experimentalists had shown that they did indeed have mass. Brout and Englert and Higgs (working independently) reconfigured theoretical constructs to provide mathematical cover for the mass-carrying bosons, providing a larger model of how elementary particles gain mass through interaction with a new “Higgs” boson. The Higgs boson has enjoyed a lot of recent time in the limelight, as one of the largest collaborative projects in international science – the Large Hadron Collider – was constructed and operated to prove its existence.
Image: The particle traces from a simulated LHC collision producing a Higgs Boson. (CERN, Lucas Taylor)

Physics: Iron-Based Superconductors
Hideo Hosono, Tokyo Institute of Technology
Superconductors demonstrate no electrical resistance, a state that allows for the highly efficient transfer of electrical signals. However, this unique condition only exists below the material’s critical temperature, which is generally prohibitively low for practical applications. Materials scientists hope that iron-based devices like that discovered by Hosono may lead to higher critical temperatures, and possibly – the holy grail – room temperature superconductors.
Image: A magnet levitates on top of a superconductor. (Wikimedia Commons)

Physics: Extrasolar Planets
Geoffrey W. Marcy, University of California Berkeley
Michael Mayor, University of Geneva
Didier Queloz, University of Cambridge and University of Geneva
The accelerating pace of extrasolar planet discoveries has been one of the buzziest developments in astronomy over the past few years, as our knowledge of Earth-like bodies gains on our timeless imagining of new worlds. The foundation for this work, which is looking to characterize smaller and smaller planets with more and more precision, was created in 1995, when Mayor, Queloz, and Marcy identified and confirmed a large mass orbiting the star 51 Pegasi. Marcy’s calculations imply that the Milky Way galaxy may contain up to 100 billion exoplanets.
Image: An artist’s conception of an extrasolar planetary system. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Chemistry: DNA Nanotechnology
A. Paul Alivisatos, University of California Berkeley
Chad A. Mirkin, Northwestern University
Nadrian C. Seeman, New York University
DNA is arguably life’s most important molecule, but it also seems to be a useful chemical tool. Alivisatos, Mirkin, and Seeman have explored different aspects of DNA’s reactivity, using it to shape crystal growth, measure minute distances, produce new forms of nucleic acids, and generate self-assembling cubes. The chemical multi-utility of the genetic molecule may ultimately interface with biological investigations.
Image: A nanoscale DNA scaffolding system. (NSF via Hao Yan, Arizona State University)

Chemistry: The Ames Test of Mutagenicity
Bruce N. Ames, Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, Oakland, CA and University of California, Berkeley
Understanding which man-made chemicals cause cancer is a critical aspect of the modern industrialized world. Previous measurement techniques involved animals and invariably led to media hysteria despite imprecise links between animal models and human reactions. Bruce Ames established a rapid-throughput, reliable test using Salmonella bacteria that has since been adopted as a bellweather of mutagenicity.
Image: Salmonella, the Ames test guinea pig. (Wikimedia Commons)

Chemistry: Molecular Click Chemistry
M.G. Finn, Georgia Institute of Technology
Valery V. Fokin, Scripps Research Institute
K. Barry Sharpless, Scripps Research Institute
Synthetic chemistry has traditionally been dogged by logistically difficult procedures, nasty organic solvents, and a lack of specificity. “Click” chemistry, which often utilized three nitrogen atoms to form five-membered rings with two carbon atoms, binding reactants together strongly and stereo-specifically, has made a range of chemical and biochemical applications more feasible. Diagnostic fluorescent labeling of newly synthesized proteins, or the production of new polymer forms are examples of click chemistry in action.
Image: New proteins within E. coli cells are made visible by a click chemistry mediated reaction between an amino acid like compound and a fluorescent dye. (Roland Hatzenpichler)

Economics: Empirical Microeconomics
Joshua D. Angrist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
David E. Card, University of California Berkeley
Alan B. Krueger, Princeton University
Complicated systems like economics, with endless variables and interacting contingencies, are a scientist’s nightmare, but the field of empirical microeconomics takes an experimentalist’s view of targeted economic questions. The method involves control data to test the effect of an intervention; being able to say something robust requires selecting just the right comparative system, or collecting just the right type of data. Findings from these citation laureates has shown that raising the minimum wage does not lower employment, and requiring school attendance increases income later in life.
Image: An empirical approach is often useful in economic studies like those involving global development. (Jeffrey Marlow)

Economics: Econometric Time Series
Sir David F. Hendry, University of Oxford
M. Hashem Pesaran, University of Southern California, and University of Cambridge
Peter C.B. Phillips, Yale University
Econometrics seeks to mobilize math, statistics, and computer science to parse economic data into predictive results. One focus has been on rooting out relationships that give statistically robust correlations, but in fact are not related; these red herrings can be very disruptive if they lead to real-world interventions. Hendry, Pesaran, and Phillips all have worked with “real-world” policy-makers in an attempt to bridge the gap between academia and the messy real world of economics.
Image: Feeling bullish or bearish? Econometrics may help you decide. (Flickr/Randy Le-Moine Photography)

Economics: Economic Theories of Regulation
Sam Peltzman, University of Chicago
Richard A. Posner, University of Chicago
The purpose and enactment of government regulation is an old, yet particularly timely, subject of academic debate. Understanding how producers or consumers benefit from different types of regulation, or whether the real goal should be socially-, rather than economically-optimized resource use, have been among Posner’s main interests. Peltzman has introduced real-world factors, suggesting that law-making regulators strike a self-interested balance between over-burdening campaign financing producers, and angering the voting public.
Image: Would environmental regulations help producers or consumers? (Image: Flickr/Martini DK)